When five friends headed to Kiev for the weekend, we didn’t have high hopes for the cuisine. Our destination had basically been decided upon by the availability of a bargain basement flight, and without the usual food related assessment! But I have to say, we were all blown away, and our food memories will primarily be focussed around dumplings. They may not look pretty, but boy they sure taste good.

Night one saw us at a Ukrainian restaurant in the middle of a park, which had been recommended by our hotel receptionist. As one of the few things we’d read about during on-plane research, and since they’d also been recommended by a returning school girl seated next to us on the plane, the ordering of Varenyky was a must. These small stuffed parcels, perhaps better known (in the UK at least) by their polish name, Pierogi, were the perfect accompaniment to an ice cold beer. We opted for a selection of three flavours: meat, potato and mushroom, and cottage cheese. Each dish came topped with fried onions and served with vast quantities of soured cream. And that was it, we were hooked, ordering dumplings at every opportunity.

On a walking tour of Kiev, our guide told us about the strong Georgian influence in the city. Our hotel was beside the Georgian embassy and so we decided to try the highly rated Georgian restaurant nearby. Well, we thought Ukrainian dumplings were good but the dumplings here, Khinkali, were on another level! Looking rather like garlic bulbs, the top of the dumpling shouldn’t be eaten (thank goodness our waiter explained that!) and is purely used to enable you to hold the dumpling and take a bite, drinking the incredible broth inside before you go on to devour the rest. A beautifully spiced and dense mixture of beef and pork was the favourite filling for us, and we’ll definitely be trying to track these beauties down in London town!

Imagining them to be the size of dumplings, we also ordered Chebureki, a kind of pastry turnover, which we selected to come stuffed with cheese. Having ordered one each, it’s safe to say they limited what other food would be consumed as they were HUGE. Fortunately they were also delicious, flaky and packed with oozing salty cheese

We did eat other things in Kiev, many of them snacky in nature to accompany the fabulously prevalent craft beer, but dumplings were the winner. All five of us will return to the city, having been amazed by just how beautiful, friendly, and full of fabulous food and drink it really is. A very happy discovery indeed.